


(Non)Sequitur

by cognomen



Series: Sine Labore Nihil [2]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Refeeding Syndrome, Starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-14
Updated: 2012-10-03
Packaged: 2017-11-14 04:59:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/511570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An aside to Sine Labore Nihil:</p><p>Harold isn't sure what he was expecting, he only knows that this isn't it. Maybe that John would come back injured and wild, or maybe that he would have regressed all the way back to his old self, lost in alcohol and untrusting. Instead what he gets back is still John, somehow - only clothed in a stinking, matted skeleton with resigned hollows around eyes that still spark life and a worn out and tired voice that still expresses him perfectly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Continues from [chapter four of Sine Labore Nihil](http://archiveofourown.org/works/472407/chapters/901729), and will end before chapter 5 begins. An interim piece.

Harold isn't sure what he was expecting, he only knows that this isn't it. Maybe that John would come back injured and wild, or maybe that he would have regressed all the way back to his old self, lost in alcohol and untrusting. Instead what he gets back is still John, somehow - only clothed in a stinking, matted skeleton with resigned hollows around eyes that still spark life and a worn out and tired voice that still expresses him perfectly.

Harold thinks it would almost be kinder if John could have lost himself until he recovered - simply woken up tired and whole in the care of someone he trusted. Harold isn't even sure he believes they trust each other anyway, but it's a nice thought. Right now they were so close to danger - a real, quiet danger and not the violent and sudden sort they were both capable of dealing with by now

He's not prepared when, before anything else in his kitchen-

"You'll have to go _slow_ , John," Harold finds himself saying before he can stop the worry from entering his tone and his hand from going out as if he had any power in the world that could make John stop against his will.

John is going through the drawers of utensils instead of the food, rattling through them until he comes up with scissors, which he puts closed and blade first into Harold's hand before he gets down onto the floor, exhausted. He puts his back against Finch's legs, thin skin and thin fabric over prominent bones that seem to find all of Harold's pressure points and he has to lean against the cabinets behind him.

"Take it off," John says, and Harold realizes that John means his hair - what matted and greasy parts seem left of it, anyway. 

"I- certainly." Harold says, because even though he doesn't want to touch it - doesn't want the tactile input that will make this all _real_ , he can do this for John at least. If he hesitates, it's to school himself not to approach this like a necessary-but-disgusting task such as unclogging the drain. 

There is after all a human at the bottom of this mess. A friend. So he takes the hair off with scissors, cutting it brutally short where it hasn't simply fallen out, and for lack of a better option leaves it on the floor telling himself he will sweep it later. 

The cut is far from even, and Harold avoids the sore, red looking areas on the scalp. The result is more flattering than it had been, but rough and uneven. It has the result of accentuating how emaciated Reese really _is_ \- Harold has seen very similar pictures in old war documentaries.

But when the last of it falls away into a dark pile scattered over the kitchen floor, Reese seems relieved. He gets carefully to his feet and Harold has no idea what to expect. He doesn't know if Reese should be in a hospital or even upright, but every slow, deliberate, painful motion serves to further convince Harold he might be in over his head.

Reese is halfway up the hall when Finch realizes he is headed to the bathroom and not the most logical destination.

"Aren't you going to _eat_ anything?" He says, because he's not sure what else to say and he's springing forward from the counter ignoring the spark of pain from his hip.

"If I eat I'm going to be sick," John explains, and he leaves the bathroom door hanging open so he doesn't have to stop and finish his explanation. Harold takes the invitation after a moment of internal debate, and then slides inside and pushes the door mostly closed but not all the way. 

"I'm too exhausted to be sick," John is still saying, discarding his filthy clothes in the tiny bathroom trash can. "I want to be clean - a luxury _you_ taught me to enjoy - and I want to sleep."

"Mr. Reese, I really think-" Finch starts, his eyes frozen on the sallow skin pulled tight as a drum head over the unhealthy jut of ribs, the flesh of the arms gone slack and deprived of their usual power, and the sickly yellow cast of all that skin.

"Just two hours, Harold." John says, placating him in a familiar tone, and then he's in the shower, running the water so hot the bathroom steams up even in the middle of summer.

He can't force John to do as he wants, but thoughts of him laying down to sleep now are chased quickly by that stillness slipping naturally and unexcitingly into a permanent state.

Finch sits down on the closed toilet lid - it's a long way down for him, he finds, and he knows getting up again will be difficult. He doesn't want to leave John totally unattended.

And he waits, watching the tile and listening to the changes in the flow of water hitting the floor, because that means John is still moving. He itches to do some more research, because he has no idea what John will need to get through this, and he feels woefully unprepared. He doesn't know, either, the extent of what happened. He feels like it must be important to know that, but as if there's no possible way to ask. 

He wonders if there are any other periods of John's life that he knows nothing about. He supposes there must be, but no gaps he feels as acutely as the newest. It feels as hollow and worn out, as scraped and sensitive as John's voice sounds in the silence that Harold finally finds himself. in.

"Wake me up in two hours please, Finch." John says, to break Harold's spell of introversion. It's a reassurance, and Harold looks up at John, at his eyes which are still his at least, and nods. He begins the difficult process of getting up, and John is halfway down the hall when Harold steps into it and finds himself unable not to ask. 

"John?" and his voice sound weak and unsure, trembling a little before he gets it under control. "You _will_ be okay, won't you?" 

The question is embarrassingly juvenile sounding, needy and closer than Harold had let himself be to needing another person in a very long time. John isn't offended, and for once he does not reach into the tender space Harold has shown him with a testing jab to remind him to close his defenses again.

"Yes, Harold." He says, and that's the truth John wants - even if it's going to take a while, even if things might get worse still before they get better, they _will_ get better.

When the door closes behind John, Finch checks his watch and allows exactly five extra minutes for John to fall asleep in his calculation of when to wake him.

-

The next week is an unquestionable agony. Harold is so careful to go slow, even though it's agony for both of them, and he admits John's restraint in those first days when he alternates drinking a glucose solution, milk, and laying down to suffer the crippling agony of digesting. How John refrained from emptying his cabinets despite the pain, Harold doesn't guess. Experience, perhaps.

Harold takes infrequent meals and always eats outside the apartment. Otherwise he doesn't leave, except to meet Fusco once when the man offers to deliver some supplies - what turns out to be a convenience store's worth of sports drink, electrolyte powder, and whey mix. Finch is ridiculously grateful, even if John looks at what Finch can manage to carry in almost warily.

He tries to hid how much recovery hurts him, but Harold recognizes it in his stoicism and the tightness in his features and shoulders, the constant quiet that Harold tries to fill with facts and information on the progress of the rest of the world.

He delivers the first number to Carter's voicemail as a carefully anonymous tip and she scrapes a victory out carefully. He doesn't mention it to John, because when he enters the apartment that morning and begins to speak, John's expression goes distant and he slowly descends to sit on the floor dizzily and Finch forgets in a torrent of worry. 

He has acquired several specific medical texts, but it does not make Finch a doctor, or give him the lab equipment to appropriately test John's blood for phosphates ore measure the fluctuations in electrolytes as his body learns how to properly function again. 

What he does know is that at this stage, this is more imminently dangerous than the initial starvation was. It's a helplessness that Harold should have known he would absolutely hate. There are no plans he can come up with to fix this, and he wonders if perhaps he should consider having a doctor permanently on the payroll, even if it meant further risk and more questions.

Having to work remotely via laptop outside of any of his usual bases of operations is slowly winding Harold's nerves up into an unintelligible mess that his self-reminders to be patient cannot fully abate.

So when a muted attention notice flashes in the lower corner of his window behind the half-dozen other processes he is trying to pay attention to around looking up at John's curled form on the couch - maybe sleeping or maybe just holding very still and breathing deeply. He dreads the number's arrival. He cannot go back to Carter, because she'd arouse suspicion if she had too many anonymous tips, and when Reese had consolidated his assets into a partnership on the task force, he had left Finch without a diversity of options.

Granted, Finch hadn't originally wanted as much as they now _had_ , perhaps lacking foresight into how much this would take out of both of them. He hadn't counted on a point coming when he couldn't bring himself to force John to work a case. He'd idealized, he admits to himself, in absolutes. He had imagined that John would either be able or dead.

John is neither at the moment, and the thought of telling him there is a number is - well. Harold knows John would pursue it, irregardless, and then very likely he _would_ be dead. Harold can't ignore the number, either. 

So Finch gets up, without much of a plan, and leaves a note before he lets himself out.

The machine delivers the number into his ear as a series of tonal beeps, like a digital dialing service mimicking the old analog sounds of phone keys, but Harold has memorized the sounds by now. He thinks faintly that the tune the sounds make is almost familiar, but he doesn't immediately recognize the number as a repeat when he scribbles the digits down in code.

But at the library, when he's typing it in, he hits the last two digits instinctively and stops himself before hitting 'enter' to initiate the search because _now_ he remembers.

Finch leans back suddenly and tries to decide if there is ever a point where he can just walk away without looking. There's every chance, however, that this number is out to hurt others rather than being in any danger. And time - which Finch very badly wants right now so that he can think this through - is working against him.

He sighs and wishes John were whole. It's the only way to salvage this situation. Harold hits enter and calls up Elias' information anyway, because even safely in jail the man has far-reaching ability to cause harm. 

Elias looks as mildly un-antagonistic as he always had in his prison intake photo, as if he were a model citizen just waiting for the system to work and send him on his unguilty way.

"Alright, Mr. Elias. Let's see what you've been up to in maximum security..." Finch tells the image, and begins hacking into the prison's inmate records.

An hour and a half later he has nothing - no visitors, no phone calls except the first he was allowed. He had only seen his lawyer twice, and he had had no correspondence either. It was clear that he was somehow communicating - their encounter with and subsequent brief alliance with his unknown and scar faced right hand might be evidence of that. Had his number come up sooner, Harold would have expected a direct threat to himself or Mr. Reese. But 'Mr. Stray' had made good on his word and if John was in worse condition on his return it wasn't Elias' fault.

The problem with under the table, shady prison communications was that they were recordless - risky and impersonal by design. But not usually totally unobserved by the guards and possibly the security cameras.

Finch downloads the database for the last month and keys up the facial recognition software to run. It will take some time, however. Before he can worry about leaving John alone that long - and before he can call him and explain _why_ , he wants to be able to say he's handling the situation on his own. That John doesn't have to help. So he calls Carter.

"You think with how much you watch you'd be a little more careful about calling me," she answers, and he sees her get up from her desk and head outside, sees Detective Fusco lift his head as she passes and Finch tries to reassure himself that it's only because Fusco knows what to look for.

"I do time my calls so no one is near your desk, detective," Finch responds, somewhere between affection and efficiency.

"Yeah okay." She answers, not reassured. "How is he?"

Finch wonders what it is about John that endears him to people around him - most especially his enemies. It isn't his sparkling personality.

"Not as well as I'd like," Harold admits, and then decides that's as much as she needs to know. "Detective, I have a problem."

"Another anonymous tip? People are going to get suspicious - I'll tell you the truth. They already are."

The sound around her changes and Harold realizes she's probably shut herself into a bathroom for privacy. 

"It's not as simple as that, I'm afraid." Harold says, as his computer indicates that it's done combing the first week of footage. "What can you tell me about what Elias has been up to?"

" _Elias?_ " Carter spits her disbelief into the phone, and then answers angrily. "He's in _jail_ where we put him. Why?"

"I have reason to believe he's planning something." Harold says,a nd sighs. He can almost hear her starting to rub irritated circles on her forehead. "You know what he's capable of."

"I know what he _was_ capable of," she answers quickly. "But after that last stunt he has no communication privileges, the guy can barely even see his lawyer without someone typing up a transcript for review."

Finch is watching hours of footage in minutes and all he sees is Elias sitting mostly still. The man reads a lot, sits a lot in thought. Often he stares directly at the camera and Finch feels a little satisfaction that he had not checked back sooner - obviously Elias had expected him to.

"There's no chance he could accidentally have been incarcerated with someone he knows? Someone who could do his communicating for him?"

"The guy's in solitary. He can't get any more locked up and cut off without a lobotomy," Carter answers, sounding exasperated. She doesn't know what Finch expects her to say, which is funny because he has no idea either.

"Very well, detective," Finch says, knowing there's no easy victory in this. "I'll get back in touch when I know more." 

"Good luck, Finch," she says, and he understands it to mean 'with John as well'  
-


	2. Chapter 2

Harold gets lost in the work, and - the solitude. It's relaxing to have a space to himself when he has been so close to another human being for days on end. John doesn't call, so Harold continues working until he looks up and startles when he discovers how long has actually passed. Guilt and worry quickly set in, and he calls John before he calls for his car. There isn't any answer and Harold worries further but refuses to keep calling - he knows it will only rack his anxiety up further.

"John-" he's already asking as he swings the door open, but John is on the couch still, curled and watching the door. "Are - you didn't answer my call."

"I was being sick," John says, honestly and obviously frustrated with himself, but he gets up anyway to show Finch he's ready. "There's another number, isn't there?"

Finch doesn't ask how he knows about the first. He wants to lie and say 'no', but he can't. He owes John the truth he promised. 

Finch answers, "Yes, but I'm going to handle it." He motions John to sit back down. He can see John's fingers, forearms, twitching from lack of phosphates and he makes his way to the kitchen. Pours milk and whey powder into the largest plastic drink container he can find.

"And how will you do that?" John asks, from the living room. 

"Well, first I'm going to get a better understanding of the situation," Harold answers, wryly. "It's not a usual case - not that any of them are."

He shakes the mixture up - it smells like too-sweet chemical strawberries, and Harold thinks after this is over he'd never like to smell that again. He carries the container to to John and hands it over. There's a moment when John wants to refuse - out of exhaustion or stubbornness, Haorld isn't sure. Then he takes it and grimaces as he drinks it, pulling it through his teeth.

Harold begins to move away, and John catches his wrist. With some relief, Harold realizes that some of the flesh has filled out again and his grip has more strength in it. John finishes drinking - instinctively greedy now that he's started, but he doesn't drink very much. Only half, for all the urgent swallowing before he puts it aside. He hasn't let go of Harold, either, not giving him permission to move away.

"Who is it?" John asks at length, after swallowing.

"An old friend of ours-"

"Zoe?" He asks, too quickly and with too much worry.

"No, John. It's Elias."

Reese twists his mouth in disgust and Harold silently agrees with him. Elias had no idea of 'grace in defeat'. 

"The question is really... who's left to target? His revenge is paid,a nd there's no one left to punish." Harold says, sighing at the difficulty of the question. 

"How's he communicating?"

"I'm not sure. I've gone over some of the surveillance records," Harold finally surrenders to the steady, downward pull on his wrist and sits on the couch next to Reese. "It's not very exciting."

Reese lets go, but Harold can still feel the imprint of John's fingers on his wrist, feels that they're sitting entirely too close and that he's spent way too much time in this apartment. Reese's eyes aren't on him, but Harold knows he's being taken in anyway.

"Where did you go?" Harold asks, in a sudden fit of impulse. He is spurred by the tired agony in John's posture, the thin skin over his cheekbones, the still too-bright eyes.

John looks at him for clarification, the slow predator's swing of his head familiar, but just a hair too slow, a fraction too genuine for Finch to believe it's not an act.

"When they had you. When it was - _bad_. Where did you go?"

John's expression closes as he realizes the question. As it takes him back into too-recent memory.

"I went here, Harold." John says, looking ahead as if he were facing an interrogator. "Where I could do some good."

Harold is struck. "Not - not to Jessica?"

"No," John says, and the muscles behind his jaws tighten, his chin tips up. "I had to believe it." Then he gets up suddenly, urgently.

"If I didn't, it wouldn't have worked."

Harold wonders if that means there is now room for doubt. If John doesn't wonder, at times, if he's _still_ there, still prisoner in a cell and in his body. There is nothing to say to that, and so Harold just keeps it, because he'd _asked_ for it, after all.

"I would never have left you," Harold says after a long moment of thought, but it's to himself. John has disappeared into the bathroom, either to be sick again or to press his body against the cool, expensively tiled floor and will himself not to be. 

-

Finch drags himself through hours of footage, learning the habits of Carl Elias when he's confined. It isn't terribly exciting, so much so that on occasion he finds himself reading along - he watches Elias read The Fountainhead over the course of two days, and All The King's Men the next day, and a dozen other American classics over the course of the month. He sleeps in precise eight hour blocks, and his meals are brought to him on plastic trays. Harold hasn't seen him write anything, hasn't seen him leave his cell except for inspection and when he's out he stands politely in the hall with his hands folded and under the eye of the camera.

John had passed by his research once, leaned down to see what Elias was reading (at the time, Captain Blood), and laughed in a way that was almost back to normal.

"Not 'The Count of Monte Cristo'?" he'd chuckled, and Harold was surprised at the depth of the joke. He'd hardly expected John to ever read it, but it shouldn't have surprised him when John did.

"No," Harold says, tapping keys just to still his ire at the extra proximity of John leaning over his shoulder. "But this is close enough."

"You think he's planning on escape?" John asks, turning his attention to the other monitors to look for security gaps that someone like Elias might pass through.

"I have no idea what he's planning," Finch says, because there was no camera into Elias' mind. "But if it's anything, he's somehow - doing it without communicating. I haven't seen him so much as say three words or write anything down."

John makes an aggravated noise as he straightens up. They couldn't afford much more 'wait and see', after three days of watching tapes and they still had nothing solid to give to Fusco or Carter. 

"If anything, it's too normal," John says, and looks sharply over at Finch. "Can you get me in there?"

Harold doesn't immediately process the full implication of the words, but he has a visceral and gut aversion to even thinking about it. He pushes back from his computer and looks up at John in a way that he hopes sufficiently expresses his current questioning of the man's sanity. 

"You can't even eat solid food, John," he says, and is almost immediately sorry that he made that his first point because the anger that describes itself on John's features is closer to self-directed frustration. "Never mind that it's a prison and while I'm sure it would be shockingly easy to get you in - not even I could get you out again. There's no _buying_ your way out of super-max."

"I ate toast this morning," John says flatly. His usual humor has gone acidic with impatience. "We can't understand the whole picture without someone in there, Harold."

"Well, it doesn't have to be you," Harold snaps, knowing he's arguing against his own past.

"Why else am I here?"

"Not to throw your _life_ away, John. I never meant that," Harold says, because he hadn't. He rubs his eyes under his glasses, tired from staring at the monitors and so that he can break eye contact. Avoid seeing John's injury. "Yes, eventually it will probably come down to that - finality. But this is not that time. Not when I can so clearly see what a bad idea it is."

John doesn't let him escape that easily. When Harold's hands come away from his eyes, John has crouched practically at Harold's feet, hands together between his bent knees, waiting. He is still so thin that his wrists peeking from the cuffs of his suit are painfully defined and his suit seems to hang on him as if designed for a man two sizes bigger - it probably _was_. His hair is still painfully, irregularly short and that's almost the worst of all because it will have to be cut again - shaved practically - before it can start to regain normality. 

"You know that this isn't just about Elias," John begins, and he is still _John_ at least. "His plans have a lot of collateral-"

"Damage," Harold overlaps him, because _yes_ \- and he couldn't possibly be taking this threat any more seriously. "Yes, Mr. Reese. I remember. If I didn't, I wouldn't have watched two months of security footage."

"I know you are taking this seriously," John continues, patiently. Harold gets the impression that if he were anyone else, John would be angry by now. "But I also think you're trying to _protect_ me." 

"Of _course_ I am, John," Harold answers, exasperated. There's no reason this should even be in question. _That_ makes John a little angry, Harold can see it happen. "Why _wouldn't_ I be?"

"You can't," John answers, his tone gone flat with anger. "It won't work, not if we let it happen now. When does it stop once it's started?"

And it stings, because John has just thrown Harold's own logic from the past - when he'd made Reese work a case in a _wheelchair_ \- back at him. And there's nothing to say against it, not really.

"I hardly think-"Finch begins, and his back is straight as it gets, tense and hurting, his hands coiled up into fists. "That waiting for you to be able to _digest food_ is a dangerous precedent to set."

But he sees that he's being stubborn because he _needs_ John. Because as much as he's shut John out, as much as even sharing this much space with him, his self-imposed vigil while he lived practically in Reese's apartment for nearly a week made Harold practically ready to crawl out of his skin with the proximity - he doesn't want to lose another person who has come to mean something to him. That as reluctant as he had been to allow that to happen, it had anyway.

"We're here to save people, Harold," And the tone should be angry but it isn't. "If that's not what I'm going to do then I'm not staying." 

"It _is_ what we're going to do. John, think of the bigger picture-"

"We aren't 'bigger picture' guys, Harold. Your machine is there for that."

And John is - right. "If you die, John - how will I save others? In the future, in all the years to come?"

"I don't know, Harold. Surely there are other possible assets out there. I know you probably already watch them. You always have a contingency-"

Harold actually starts to get up with the intent of walking away before John can anger him into revealing something personal. John catches his wrists and stops Harold's momentum.

"It's _our_ unfinished business," John says, because he can't admit he needs it. Harold realizes that this is about John getting _out_ of confinement, that this - fixing something - was the only way he knew to heal anymore. Harold had done that _to_ him when he thought he was doing something _for_ John instead.

He sits down again heavily, and it hurts his back, his leg, but he barely registers it. 

"This is killing both of us," John says, seriously. "You're breaking your own boundaries and I see -"

"Yes," Harold says distantly, because of course John had sensed his anxiety over the enforced closeness. 

Harold turns his hands to free them from John's grip and when John starts to pull his hands back, he doesn't let them go. Instead he just grips them around the backs, hides their thinness with his own hands.

"I'm not accustomed to letting people into my life, John. Maybe this is selfish, this time, but I just don't feel like letting another person _out_ of it now that I've made the effort," Harold says, and that's not quite right. It sounds selfish and childish, but the _emotion_ is that way, and it would be a lie of a different kind to express it any other way. 

John understands anyway. He half-smiles at the admission and understands yet another secret of Harold Finch's: that he's not very good at being in love.

"I'm not going anywhere," John says, making it a promise. "Get me in and I'll get out again. It only looks impossible from this side."

Harold wants to refuse again, but he can feel John's pulse - real under his fingertips, and steady. He thinks of John standing tall with a gun in his hands, John stopping a moving car with a well placed shot while standing right in its path because he could almost _make_ himself successful just by sheer confidence. He thinks of these things instead of the sounds of John in agony, or his silent miserable eyes, like a beaten dog. He tries not to think of John sinking slowly down in the kitchen, not wanting to surrender to his own _body_ of all things.

He sighs and tries to regain objectivity, but even his greatest strength is useless against proximity of this sort. John is right, to an extent, and Harold wishes the number had come up a week - two - later.

By then the constant observation would have driven them both into readiness - 

The thought jolts through Harold, startling him. When he realizes what he had been missing, he feels like a blind fool.

"What?" John asks as Harold pulls his hands away and turns back to the computer. 

"I've watched nearly a month of footage, and not once has Elias been totally off-camera," Finch says, rewinding and re-checking. "In fact he deliberately stays on..."

John makes a comprehending noise as Harold continues.

"So what if we're wrong about this? What if Elias isn't the danger, but he's about to be _in_ danger?" Harold sits back and actually considers aloud, "Since he's in jail - maybe it's hardly our place to intervene."

"I thought we were aiming for a _higher standard_ , Harold."

"I know," Harold sighs. "But it's nice to dream."

"You don't mean that, "John says, getting up. Harold lets the joke drift along on silence. "How do we stop it?"

"It would be nice to know what the danger exactly _is_ ," Finch says, and begins pulling up prison personnel files, trying to cross reference where and how the access would happen. 

"We never do," John says, and disappears from Harold's peripheral vision for a while, giving him space to work and think. He returns with hot green tea - it's not sencha, but it's good enough given that it came from John's kitchen and Harold had never seen the man drink much of anything except coffee and water. 

Harold has just lifted the cup absently to his lips when he finds it - and were he not so familiar with Elias' past, he would have missed it.

"Oh - it's the guards," he says, and sits back to digest the information. "Some of our friends in HR have some long reaching ties it would seem. A holdover from the good-old days of mob rule - there's a cousin strategically placed who seems to be the leader of this effort."

Harold looks up at John, who considers the information, then he pulls out a chair on the other side of the dining room table where Harold has set up shop and settles into it. Then Harold dials Fusco - because he knows that this is why John keeps such a dangerous pet, and history will be handy here, to get the information that they need: how and when.

-

They are waiting again and it makes them more aware of each other. John deliberately eats a bland and small meal for Harold's benefit. Harold suspects he intended it to be larger by the crusts and crushed remains on the plate, but has run into the barrier of a body that over reacts to anything but empty.

Harold watches him do it, watches him toy with the last bits of crust and reaches out a hand across the space to lay it steadyingly on John's shoulder. To give him permission to stop. John looks up at him, eyes strange, and Harold - knows that this moment could turn any number of ways. That there's an opportunity here, the same as many he's had in the past. He won't take it right now, but - in the future, when John is well again - 

"I have an idea, John," Harold says, because it's been forming in his mind since he realized that it wasn't Elias who was the threat. John doesn't look like he's open to ideas, but Harold thinks he might warm up to _this_ one. "I think we know someone who would be interested - personally - in seeing to Elias' safety." 

John sees it immediately and doesn't like it just as quickly.

"Him? You want to reunite Elias and his most dangerous weapon?"

"They'll both be in prison already, John. The possible damage is minimal, and surely he'd want the risk," Harold says, keeping is tone mild. "He's just as capable as you with the right motivation - you've said so yourself."

It was offhanded - a distantly respectful comment made when Finch had explained - with as much camera footage as he had - how Reese had been rescued. Heat of the moment or not, John had still said it.

John ceases arguing. It's as close to an agreement as Harold is likely to get. He digs through the desk drawer until he comes up with the phone John had brought home. Harold had, of course, carefully inspected it for anything that could endanger them but had found it disappointingly mundane before he'd broken it down into components that could not function separately. His backtracking on it had been unsurprising - the name on it was fake. It was one of those easy-setup go phones that he and John lived with.

But Harold just bet - and when he reactivated it carefully, there was one anonymous text of ten digits.

"What makes you think he'll be willing-" John begins, but Harold displays the text before he can finish.

"Because even stray dogs need exercise, Mr. Reese." 

-

**Author's Note:**

> Head back to [Sine Labore Nihil](http://archiveofourown.org/works/472407/chapters/973642) for the continuation.


End file.
